It was Miss Noel who said, “Really, Ettie dear, I can’t have you driving about furiously in a gig without a groom.  But pray thank Mr.—­what is the name?—­Price for being so kind as to propose it, meaning to give you pleasure.  He has been so obliging, too, as to procure tickets for us to the play, and has kindly offered to escort us:  I have a letter from him as well.  A most lovely day, this.  There seems no end, really, to the fine weather.  Remind me to look at the thermometer after breakfast, before the sun catches it, love.  It must have been quite two degrees hotter yesterday than the day before; but I neglected to make the entry in my journal, and so cannot be quite positive.  Only fancy!  Is it not annoying?  I am getting sadly forgetful about everything.  And I so dislike guess-work and conjecture in a record of the kind.  I should like to see the rose-trees at home this morning:  the garden must be gay with flowers by this,—­though the last time I went pottering about it in my pattens there was nothing out but the blackthorn.”

Other entertainments followed closely upon the dinner, of which Mrs. Sykes complained to Miss Noel, saying, “Why will they ask me out?  Why can’t they leave me alone?  Really, I shall not let any one know that I am here, if anything ever brings me back to America,—­which is most unlikely.”

“There is nothing to prevent you staying at home if you do not wish to go out,” replied Miss Noel.  “But do you not like it?  I enjoy going to the Browns’.  Mr. Brown is a man of cultivated mind and Christian courtesy; I like him very much; and the people one meets there are generally of superior station and refined education.  Why should you object to meeting them?”

“American society may be nice some day,—­that is, if it ever grows up.  There doesn’t seem to be anybody in it now over twenty,” grumbled Mrs. Sykes.

One result of the parties was that Mr. Ketchum, going over to Mr. Brown’s one morning, found all the young people assembled there practising steps, the “two-and-a-half,” the “polka-glide,” and other cheerful evolutions.  After watching Mr. Ramsay’s efforts to do as Bijou did, for a moment, he called out to her to know what she was doing to a British subject under his protection, and, being shown by Bijou (skirts held up a little, the prettiest feet imaginable, daintily shod, and the gliding, swaying, pirouetting, galopading, graceful beyond expression), cried out, “Teaching him to dance, are you?  I thought he was practising heading off a calf in a lane.”  This so exactly expressed the awkward desperate plunges to the right and left which Mr. Ramsay was executing at the moment, that Mr. Heathcote had another of his acute attacks of appreciation, and became almost a subject for sal volatile and burnt feathers, Mr. Ramsay saying good-naturedly, “What a fellow you are for chaffin’, Ketchum!  Just you hook it out of this, will you, and let us get on with this?  One and two and a kick, you say, Miss Brown?  I am such a duffer I can’t get the kick.”